1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a media processing system having a plurality of user terminals connected to a media processing device over a communication network, such as a private LAN, so that the user terminals can control driving the media processing device to process and produce removable media such as CDs and DVDs. More particularly, the invention relates to a method of managing media that is produced according to instructions from a user terminal and is stored in the media storage unit of the media processing device.
2. Related Art
A media processing device such as a disc publisher or disc duplicator generally supplies a blank CD or other blank media stored in a blank media stacker to an internal CD (media) drive, writes predetermined content to the blank CD, prints a label on the medium using an internal label printer, and then stores the completed CD in a finished media stacker or issues (discharges) the finished medium from a media exit. Media processing devices of this type are taught, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,914,918, JP-A-2000-260172, and JP-A-2005-259318.
Media processing systems have also been constructed using a corporate or other private LAN so that a single media processing device connected to the LAN can be used by a plurality of user PCs that are also connected to the LAN. Users can produce media and retrieve the produced media using this type of media processing system as described below.
The user first produces the content to be written and/or printed on the blank recording medium using the user's PC, and then sends the content data over the network to the media processing device. After receiving the content data, the media processing device produces the media, hereafter “processed or finished media” and temporarily stores the processed or finished media in the internal media stacker. The user must then go to the media processing device to retrieve the processed or finished media from the media stacker.
When this type of media processing system is used to produce media containing confidential information, the finished media must be managed so that the finished media are not made available to unauthorized third parties that do not have permission to access the confidential information. In order to retrieve the finished media from the media processing device, the user is therefore preferably authenticated so that media can only be retrieved by the user that produced the media.
If the media processing device malfunctions or requires repair, for example, the media processing system administrator must remove any finished media remaining in the media processing device. Because leaving finished media in the media processing device for any length of time is undesirable in terms of data security, the administrator preferably regularly removes any unretrieved finished media from the media stacker and stores the retrieved media in a separate location. At the end of every business day, for example, the administrator preferably removes any finished media left in the media processing device and delivers the finished media the next day to the correct user.
However, when the administrator removes and stores the finished media in a different location, the user may not know where the media that the user produced went. Whether the finished media was delivered by the administrator to the correct user also cannot be confirmed. In order to prevent leakage of confidential information, media containing confidential information must be managed so that where the media went and how the media was moved from one location to another can be verified from the time the media is finished.